The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Acoustic imaging techniques have been found to be valuable in a variety of applications. A certain acoustic imaging technique referred to as ultrasound imaging is perhaps the most well-known, but acoustic techniques are more generally used at a variety of different acoustic frequencies for imaging a variety of different phenomena. Certain acoustic imaging techniques use transmission and detection of acoustic radiation in identification of structural defects, detection of impurities, as well as detection of tissue abnormalities in living bodies. All such acoustic imaging techniques rely generally on the fact that different structures, whether they are abnormal bodily tissues or defects in an airplane wing, have different impedances to acoustic radiation. Certain known acoustic imaging systems include an acoustic probe having multiple-element array transducer elements that may have linear, curved-linear, phased-array, or similar characteristics to control the transmission and detection of acoustic radiation. Degradation in performance of such transducer elements is known to occur with extended transducer use and/or through user abuse. Certain known techniques to test the degradation of the transducer elements require the use of a reflective target and a tank of water as a conductive medium in order to analyze the performance of such transducer elements. A drawback of such acoustic testing techniques includes the difficulty in alignment of the acoustic probe with respect to the water tank and target, such difficulty encumbering the speed and repeatability of the acoustic test.
There is, therefore, a general need in the art for a system and method of testing acoustic probes that requires less infrastructure (i.e., target and water tank) and yet improves speed and repeatability of the test of the operability of the acoustic probe.